Keyboard end of life

Hi,
I understand you want to go with actual features. This old keyboard is not state of the art anymore. I welcome that, that you are always working on the latest possible functions and features and happy to try them out.

Please work on the problems and bugs which are reported to you too. New features only are not enough maybe.

Here are some examples:
1) Fill in for 2FA security at WhatsApp app is not working. You know this bug since August 2018. So therefore we have to start copy/paste the PIN from the 1Password app again or your force us to stop using 2FA for this app.
2) Firefox is not good support, often I used your keyboard. After long discussions with you I started to use Firefox Preview more often. But also here you force us to use an app with less security. Add-ons will supported from Mozilla soonest next year.
3) Only for example for some other apps too: Fill in for Miles & More app is not working. So we have to copy/paste such login details again.

1Password Version: Not ProvidedExtension Version: Not ProvidedOS Version: Not ProvidedSync Type: Not Provided

Comments

Please do not remove the keyboard!!!! There are still way too many times where the autofill functionality does not kick in correctly even on Android 10. I have to fall back on the keyboard at least several times a week.

@Philipp and @1password_kbuser thanks for letting us know that you continue to use the 1Password keyboard to manually fill your login credentials in some apps or websites. While we don't typically announce development plans ahead of time, we made an exception in this case because we know that there are a few people such as yourselves who continue to make use of the 1Password keyboard. With that in mind, I didn't want to remove the 1Password keyboard without first giving you the heads up.

When we originally built the 1Password keyboard, it was to solve the problem of being able to fill credentials into apps and browsers without making use of the clipboard. This simply wasn't possible with any other mechanism at the time. Since then though, we've developed our accessibility and Autofill services to provide a much more seamless filling experience. And we've added support for drag and drop, so that you can manually fill in your credentials in those cases where automatic filling doesn't work with a particular app or website.

So there are better ways of automatically and manually filling in your credentials from 1Password into other apps. At the same time, the 1Password keyboard lacks many of the amenities that are considered essential of a modern keyboard. The result is that the 1Password keyboard just isn't the right tool for the job anymore and it is time for us to remove it.

We are continually working to improve our Autofill and accessibility services, so you're able to easily fill into more apps and websites than ever before. Although drag and drop is available for those times when automatic filling isn't, our goal is for you to have to rely on it as little as possible. With that in mind, I'd love to have you tell us more about any apps or websites where you're not able to fill in your credentials (thanks for providing those specific examples @Philipp). This will help us make 1Password better for everyone!

@deepdvd: We can't recommend sticking with something outdated, but you're right that how split screen is accessed can very depending on the device and how up to date it is with Android. And while not all apps support split screen anyway, and ultimately it's up to their developers to finally adopt technologies and guidelines Google introduced years ago, we'll continue to work on filling and to see what we can do to offer more options when 1Password cannot fill directly itself. It's worth noting that before Google introduced OpenYOLO, Android Autofill, and allowed password managers to use accessibility for filling, we had only the 1Password keyboard and got a lot of complaints about it. That's diminished dramatically in recent years since the availability of Autofill and Accessibility and deprecation of the keyboard, which most 1Password users have now forgotten or never even knew existed. I was one of the people who advocated strongly for keeping the keyboard this long because, as you rightly point out, it can still be useful in some rare cases, and it wasn't like we needed to do work to keep it. But more recently it's become a liability in that having it as part of 1Password actually causes some compatibility issues. So It's not something we can hold onto for much longer. I thank you for the specific examples of problem apps, and we'll work on ways to have 1Password help in those kinds of situations without holding it back; the keyboard has to go though.

+1 for @deepdvd. To be fair, I haven't tried drag and drop as the keyboard was always my go-to method when autofill didn't work (which is, unfortunately, pretty common). I promise to give it a fair shot. But my gut tells me this is going to be painful. Using split screen is always such a bad experience (especially for those of us who prefer smaller smartphones), and so many apps don't support it at all, that relying on that for the fallback option feels like a big step back.

It's easy to push the blame onto the other apps; after all, Android has supported split screen for years now. That's kind of fair, but at the same time, let's not kid ourselves. We know e.g. banks are never going to be at the forefront of Android development.

I do appreciate the need to keep a lean codebase. If that means the keyboard has to go, so be it, but could there be some other fallback for auto fill besides split screen? Maybe a persistent notification or something that pops up a box to drag and drop from?

One last suggestion: the help page the keyboard links to about how to fill logins doesn't make any mention of drag and drop. Could that be added? I was originally a lot more up-in-arms because I thought you guys were taking away the only fallback for when autofill doesn't work.

Agree with the poster above - would be nice if the keyboard could at least be released as a separate apk so those of us who rely on the keyboard still could use it. I honestly don't care about the keyboard functionality, just the filling functionality - it's the easiest, fastest, and most secure way to fill passwords when the buggy Android autofill doesn't kick in properly.

I'd like for 1Password to keep the keyboard. I'm finding that the Autofill works fine for passwords but not the user field. Sometimes I rememember which user ID I used but often I do not. They keyboard seems less clumsy than switching to 1Password, hunting, copying, and pasting.

I agree with all 1password users posts above! I think it would be beneficial to allow users to vote on it on the Forum with an agree button, or even more simpler for each one password user having the ability to vote when they do use the keyboard because they already know of the work around when the autofill doesn't work. And when they see the pop up settings 1password keyboard will be going away soon having the ability to vote at that point.
This would give you an idea of how many people are using this workaround, instead of them complaining or looking for help on the forum after it's gone as this is how I found the workaround, because it was very frustrating when autofill (multiple times a day) and will not work as I have noticed since I have updated both of my devices to Android Pie.

@mverde , just want to echo my thoughts on this topic. I am in favor of keeping the keyboard integration.
As you might be aware that android lets you choose the keyboard layout on the fly, i always use this to switch to 1password keyboard when autofill is not supported by the app. your team should consider leaving that option to the user. the keyboard feature your app provides is good enough than the workaround suggested like copy-paste, split-screen drag-n-drop etc.
as @Philipp suggested please focuz of adding features/resolving issues, rather than removing whats working for a percentage of your user base. You are already getting competition from Google password manager(which has beta support for password generation) and KeePassXC

Although it's improved a bit in recent years, for many users it's still inconvenient (perhaps an understatement) to switch keyboards, depending on the OS version and vendor customizations. And more recently there are also compatibility issues cropping up which make it problematic to keep they keyboard anyway. So we're working on both improving Autofill and Accessibility compatibility, but also adding tools there that can help in cases where those do not work well. Thanks everyone for the feedback here. If any other specific apps, websites, or use cases come up, please share them so we can use those as test cases as well. Happy holidays!

Reading here because of the notice in the app, and firstly, I didn't know there was support for drag-drop on 1P/Android.

Please don't remove the keyboard, as for me that would make 1P on my phone unusable: it's stuck on Android 7, so no fancy autofill features. It's too new (only 2-and-a-bit) years old to justify throwing the phone out. As others have said, frequently apps don't let me use alternatives.

Android 7 celebrated the 3 year birthday of its general release 3 months ago, and no longer receives security updates. As such, that's not something we can recommend, and seems especially antithetical when ostensibly using 1Password to be more secure; an outdated OS with known unpatched vulnerabilities as a result is not a suitable foundation for security. That said, Accessibility should be an available option even on an old device/OS, and we'll continue working to make that more helpful both generally but also based on specific test cases shared with us.

You asked to be notified of Android apps that do not work with autofill without the 1PW keyboard. How to I deliver that info? Also, fyi, split screen drag and drop does not work on my Android 8.0.0 Galaxy S7 for certain apps. All of my apps worked with the 1PW keyboard and if I cannot use my apps after you do away with this keyboard I will be forced to drop my subscription to 1PW and find something that works. Not withstanding what you've said are the reasons for dropping the 1PW keyboard, you need to realize you will do real harm to many users such as myself you can't get your "work arounds" to work.

@wh472 Feel free to report issues here in our forum or over email at [email protected]. Autofill, Accessibility, and drag and drop are the main methods for filling rather than workarounds. Please let us know of any apps you're having trouble with so we can help.

@fritzophrenic I use Firefox as my main browser on Android and find that Autofill and Accessibility work when I need them to. If you notice any specific sites you're having trouble with, please let us know.

@SomeFancyName I'm not sure I fully understand your analogy. You'll never be locked out of anything due to the keyboard going away. As we've mentioned previously, Autofill, Accessibility, and drag and drop fill in most cases. If there are any instances where you notice that none of these work, let us know.

Curious: has 1password explored floating views (like how Facebook does those annoying chat heads), as a simpler alternative to drag/drop? It's a lot of user effort to split screen IMO, and being able to instantly launch a floating view could be way easier.

That's a really interesting point about Facebook's method, and if it weren't for StrandHogg it might be tempting to at least look into it. But we have to be picky about the technologies we use because many can be abused.

It's true that Google originally announced 3 years or so ago that Accessibility was not for password managers to use, but they reversed after listening to feedback from the industry and we've been working with them on that ever since.

Anyway, as mentioned above, we're looking into other options that can serve as a fallback when the keyboard is removed -- which, it has not been; I feel like I need to point that out given some of the comments being tossed around.